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From A Theor y of Justice

JOHN RAWLS

THE ROLE OF JUSTICE
Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A
theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue;
likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be
reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability
founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For
this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a
greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a
few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. Therefore in
a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled, the rights
secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social
interests. The only thing that permits us to acquiesce in an erroneous theory is the
lack of a better one; analogously, an injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary
to avoid an even greater injustice. Being first virtues of human activities, truth and
justice are uncompromising.

These propositions seem to express our intuitive conviction of the primacy of
justice. No doubt they are expressed too strongly. In any event I wish to inquire
whether these contentions or others similar to them are sound, and if so how they
can be accounted for. To this end it is necessary to work out a theory of justice in
the light of which these assertions can be interpreted and assessed. I shall begin by
considering the role of the principles of justice. Let us assume, to fix ideas, that a
society is a more or less self-sufficient association of persons who in their relations
to one another recognize certain rules of conduct as binding and who for the most
part act in accordance with them. Suppose further that these rules specify a system
of cooperation designed to advance the good of those taking part in it. Then,
although a society is a cooperative venture for mutual advantage, it is typically
marked by a conflict as well as by an identity of interests. There is an identity of
interests since social cooperation makes possible a better life for all than any would
have if each were to live solely by his own efforts. There is a conflict of interests
since persons are not indifferent as to how the greater benefits produced by their
collaboration are distributed, for in order to pursue their ends they each prefer a
larger to a lesser share. A set of principles is required for choosing among the
various social arrangements which determine this division of advantages and for
underwriting an agreement on the proper distributive shares. These principles are
the principles of social justice: they provide a way of assigning rights and duties in
the basic institutions of society and they define the appropriate distribution of the
benefits and burdens of social cooperation.

Now let us say that a society is well-ordered when it is not only designed to
advance the good of its members but when it is also effectively regulated by a
public conception of justice. That is, it is a society in which (1) everyone accepts
and knows that the others accept the same principles of justice, and (2) the basic
social institutions generally satisfy and are generally known to satisfy these
principles. In this case while men may put forth excessive demands on one another,
they nevertheless acknowledge a common point of view from which their claims
may be adjudicated. If men’s inclination to self-interest makes their vigilance
against one another necessary, their public sense of justice makes their secure
association together possible. Among individuals with disparate aims and purposes
a shared conception of justice establishes the bonds of civic friendship; the general

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desire for justice limits the pursuit of other ends. One may think of a public
conception of justice as constituting the fundamental charter of a well-ordered
human association.

Existing societies are of course seldom well-ordered in this sense, for what is
just and unjust is usually in dispute. Men disagree about which principles should
define the basic terms of their association. Yet we may still say, despite this
disagreement, that they each have a conception of justice. That is, they understand
the need for, and they are prepared to affirm, a characteristic set of principles for
assigning basic rights and duties and for determining what they take to be the
proper distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation. Thus it seems
natural to think of the concept of justice as distinct from the various conceptions of
justice and as being specified by the role which these different sets of principles,
these different conceptions, have in common.1 Those who hold different
conceptions of justice can, then, still agree that institutions are just when no
arbitrary distinctions are made between persons in the assigning of basic rights and
duties and when the rules determine a proper balance between competing claims to
the advantages of social life. Men can agree to this description of just institutions
since the notions of an arbitrary distinction and of a proper balance, which are
included in the concept of justice, are left open for each to interpret according to
the principles of justice that he accepts. These principles single out which
similarities and differences among persons are relevant in determining rights and
duties and they specify which division of advantages is appropriate. Clearly this
distinction between the concept and the various conceptions of justice settles no
important questions. It simply helps to identify the role of the principles of social
justice.

Some measure of agreement in conceptions of justice is, however, not the only
prerequisite for a viable human community. There are other fundamental social
problems, in particular those of coordination, efficiency, and stability. Thus the
plans of individuals need to be fitted together so that their activities are compatible
with one another and they can all be carried through without anyone’s legitimate
expectations being severely disappointed. Moreover, the execution of these plans
should lead to the achievement of social ends in ways that are efficient and
consistent with justice. And finally, the scheme of social cooperation must be
stable: it must be more or less regularly complied with and its basic rules willingly
acted upon; and when infractions occur, stabilizing forces should exist that prevent
further violations and tend to restore the arrangement. Now it is evident that these
three problems are connected with that of justice. In the absence of a certain
measure of agreement on what is just and unjust, it is clearly more difficult for
individuals to coordinate their plans efficiently in order to insure that mutually
beneficial arrangements are maintained. Distrust and resentment corrode the ties of
civility, and suspicion and hostility tempt men to act in ways they would otherwise
avoid. So while the distinctive role of conceptions of justice is to specify basic
rights and duties and to determine the appropriate distributive shares, the way in
which a conception does this is bound to affect the problems of efficiency,
coordination, and stability. We cannot, in general, assess a conception of justice by
its distributive role alone, however useful this role may be in identifying the
concept of justice. We must take into account its wider connections; for even
though justice has a certain priority, being the most important virtue of institutions,
it is still true that, other things equal, one conception of justice is preferable to
another when its broader consequences are more desirable.

* * *

THE MAIN IDEA OF THE THEORY OF JUSTICE

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My aim is to present a conception of justice which generalizes and carries to a
higher level of abstraction the familiar theory of the social contract as found, say, in
Locke. Rousseau, and Kant.2 In order to do this we are not to think of the original
contract as one to enter a particular society or to set up a particular form of
government. Rather, the guiding idea is that the principles of justice for the basic
structure of society are the object of the original agreement. They are the principles
that free and rational persons concerned to further their own interests would accept
in an initial position of equality as defining the fundamental terms of their
association. These principles are to regulate all further agreements; they specify the
kinds of social cooperation that can be entered into and the forms of government
that can be established. This way of regarding the principles of justice I shall call
justice as fairness.

Thus we are to imagine that those who engage in social cooperation choose
together, in one joint act, the principles which are to assign basic rights and duties
and to determine the division of social benefits. Men are to decide in advance how
they are to regulate their claims against one another and what is to be the
foundation charter of their society. Just as each person must decide by rational
reflection what constitutes his good, that is, the system of ends which it is rational
for him to pursue, so a group of persons must decide once and for all what is to
count among them as just and unjust. The choice which rational men would make
in this hypothetical situation of equal liberty assuming for the present that this
choice problem has a solution, determines the principles of justice.

In justice as fairness the original position of equality corresponds to the state of
nature in the traditional theory of the social contract. This original position is not,
of course, thought of as an actual historical state of affairs, much less as a primitive
condition of culture. It is understood as a purely hypothetical situation
characterized so as to lead to a certain conception of justice.3 Among the essential
features of this situation is that no one knows his place in society, his class position
or social status, nor does any one know his fortune in the distribution of natural
assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like. I shall even assume that
the parties do not know their conceptions of the good or their special psychological
propensities. The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance. This
ensures that no one is advantaged or disadvantaged in the choice of principles by
the outcome of natural chance or the contingency of social circumstances. Since all
are similarly situated and no one is able to design principles to favor his particular
condition, the principles of justice are the result of a fair agreement or bargain. For
given the circumstances of the original position, the symmetry of everyone’s
relations to each other, this initial situation is fair between individuals as moral
persons, that is, as rational beings with their own ends and capable, I shall assume,
of a sense of justice. The original position is, one might say, the appropriate initial
status quo, and thus the fundamental agreements reached in it are fair. This explains
the propriety of the name “justice as fairness”: it conveys the idea that the
principles of justice are agreed to in an initial situation that is fair. The name does
not mean that the concepts of justice and fairness are the same, any more than the
phrase “poetry as metaphor” means that the concepts of poetry and metaphor are
the same.

Justice as fairness begins, as I have said, with one of the most general of all
choices which persons might make together, namely, with the choice of the first
principles of a conception of justice which is to regulate all subsequent criticism
and reform of institutions. Then, having chosen a conception of justice, we can
suppose that they are to choose a constitution and a legislature to enact laws, and so
on, all in accordance with the principles of justice initially agreed upon. Our social
situation is just if it is such that by this sequence of hypothetical agreements we
would have contracted into the general system of rules which defines it. Moreover,
assuming that the original position does determine a set of principles (that is, that a

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particular conception of justice would be chosen), it will then be true that whenever
social institutions satisfy these principles those engaged in them can say to one
another that they are cooperating on terms to which they would agree if they were
free and equal persons whose relations with respect to one another were fair. They
could all view their arrangements as meeting the stipulations which they would
acknowledge in an initial situation that embodies widely accepted and reasonable
constraints on the choice of principles. The general recognition of this fact would
provide the basis for a public acceptance of the corresponding principles of justice.
No society can, of course, be a scheme of cooperation which men enter voluntarily
in a literal sense; each person finds himself placed at birth in some particular
position in some particular society, and the nature of this position materially affects
his life prospects. Yet a society satisfying the principles of justice as fairness comes
as close as a society can to being a voluntary scheme, for it meets the principles
which free and equal persons would assent to under circumstances that are fair. In
this sense its members are autonomous and the obligations they recognize self-
imposed.

One feature of justice as fairness is to think of the parties in the initial situation
as rational and mutually disinterested. This does not mean that the parties are
egoists, that is, individuals with only certain kinds of interests, say in wealth,
prestige, and domination. But they are conceived as not taking an interest in one
another’s interests. They are to presume that even their spiritual aims may be
opposed, in the way that the aims of those of different religions may be opposed.
Moreover, the concept of rationality must be interpreted as far as possible in the
narrow sense, standard in economic theory, of taking the most effective means to
given ends. I shall modify this concept to some extent, as explained later, but one
must try to avoid introducing into it any controversial ethical elements. The initial
situation must be characterized by stipulations that are widely accepted.

In working out the conception of justice as fairness one main task clearly is to
determine which principles of justice would be chosen in the original position. To
do this we must describe this situation in some detail and formulate with care the
problem of choice which it presents. These matters I shall take up in the
immediately succeeding chapters. It may be observed, however, that once the
principles of justice are thought of as arising from an original agreement in a
situation of equality, it is an open question whether the principle of utility would be
acknowledged. Offhand it hardly seems likely that persons who view themselves as
equals, entitled to press their claims upon one another, would agree to a principle
which may require lesser life prospects for some simply for the sake of a greater
sum of advantages enjoyed by others. Since each desires to protect his interests, his
capacity to advance his conception of the good, no one has a reason to acquiesce in
an enduring loss for himself in order to bring about a greater net balance of
satisfaction. In the absence of strong and lasting benevolent impulses, a rational
man would not accept a basic structure merely because it maximized the algebraic
sum of advantages irrespective of its permanent effects on his own basic rights and
interests. Thus it seems that the principle of utility is incompatible with the
conception of social cooperation among equals for mutual advantage. It appears to
be inconsistent with the idea of reciprocity implicit in the notion of a well-ordered
society. Or, at any rate, so I shall argue.

I shall maintain instead that the persons in the initial situation would choose
two rather different principles: the first requires equality in the assignment of basic
rights and duties, while the second holds that social and economic inequalities, for
example inequalities of wealth and authority are just only if they result in
compensating benefits for everyone, and in particular for the least advantaged
members of society. These principles rule out justifying institutions on the grounds
mat the hardships of some are offset by a greater good in the aggregate. It may be
expedient but it is not just that some should have less in order that others may

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prosper. But there is no injustice in the greater benefits earned by a few provided
that the situation of persons not so fortunate is thereby improved. The intuitive idea
is that since everyone’s well-being depends upon a scheme of cooperation without
which no one could have a satisfactory life, the division of advantages should be
such as to draw forth the willing cooperation of everyone taking part in it,
including those less well situated. The two principles mentioned seem to be a fair
basis on which those better endowed, or more fortunate in their social position,
neither of which we can be said to deserve, could expect the willing cooperation of
others when some workable scheme is a necessary condition of the welfare of all.4

Once we decide to look for a conception of justice that prevents the use of the
accidents of natural endowment and the contingencies of social circumstance as
counters in a quest for political and economic advantage, we are led to these
principles. They express the result of leaving aside those aspects of the social world
that seem arbitrary from a moral point of view.

The problem of the choice of principles, however, is extremely difficult. I do
not expect the answer I shall suggest to be convincing to everyone. It is, therefore,
worth noting from the outset that justice as fairness, like other contract views,
consists of two parts: (1) an interpretation of the initial situation and of the problem
of choice posed there, and (2) a set of principles which, it is argued, would be
agreed to. One may accept the first part of the theory (or some variant thereof), but
not the other, and conversely. The concept of the initial contractual situation may
seem reasonable although the particular principles proposed are rejected. To be
sure, I want to maintain that the most appropriate conception of this situation does
lead to principles of justice contrary to utilitarianism and perfectionism, and
therefore that the contract doctrine provides an alternative to these views. Still, one
may dispute this contention even though one grants that the contractarian method is
a useful way of studying ethical theories and of setting forth their underlying
assumptions.

Justice as fairness is an example of what I have called a contract theory. Now
there may be an objection to the term “contract” and related expressions, but I think
it will serve reasonably well. Many words have misleading connotations which at
first are likely to confuse. The terms “utility” and “utilitarianism” are surely no
exception. They too have unfortunate suggestions which hostile critics have been
willing to exploit; yet they are clear enough for those prepared to study utilitarian
doctrine. The same should be true of the term “contract” applied to moral theories.
As I have mentioned, to understand it one has to keep in mind that it implies a
certain level of abstraction. In particular, the content of the relevant agreement is
not to enter a given society or to adopt a given form of government, but to accept
certain moral principles. Moreover, the undertakings referred to are purely
hypothetical: a contract view holds that certain principles would be accepted in a
well-defined initial situation.

The merit of the contract terminology is that it conveys the idea that principles
of justice may be conceived as principles that would be chosen by rational persons,
and that in this way conceptions of justice may be explained and justified. The
theory of justice is a part, perhaps the most significant part, of the theory of rational
choice. Furthermore, principles of justice deal with conflicting claims upon the
advantages won by social cooperation; they apply to the relations among several
persons or groups. The word “contract” suggests this plurality as well as the
condition that the appropriate division of advantages must be in accordance with
principles acceptable to all parties. The condition of publicity for principles of
justice is also connoted by the contract phraseology. Thus, if these principles are
the outcome of an agreement, citizens have a knowledge of the principles that
others follow. It is characteristic of contract theories to stress the public nature of
political principles. Finally there is the long tradition of the contract doctrine.

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Expressing the tie with this line of thought helps to define ideas and accords with
natural piety. There are then several advantages in the use of the term “contract.”
With due precautions taken, it should not be misleading.

A final remark. Justice as fairness is not a complete contract theory. For it is
clear that the contractarian idea can be extended to the choice of more or less an
entire ethical system, that is, to a system including principles for all the virtues and
not only for justice. Now for the most part I shall consider only principles of justice
and others closely related to them; I make no attempt to discuss the virtues in a
systematic way. Obviously if justice as fairness succeeds reasonably well, a next
step would be to study the more general view suggested by the name “rightness as
fairness.” But even this wider theory fails to embrace all moral relationships, since
it would seem to include only our relations with other persons and to leave out of
account how we are to conduct ourselves toward animals and the rest of nature. I
do not contend that the contract notion offers a way to approach these questions
which are certainly of the first importance; and I shall have to put them aside. We
must recognize the limited scope of justice as fairness and of the general type of
view that it exemplifies. How far its conclusions must be revised once these other
matters are understood cannot be decided in advance.

* * *

TWO PRINCIPLES OF JUSTICE

I shall now state in a provisional form the two principles of justice that I believe
would be agreed to in the original position The first formulation of these principles
is tentative. As we go on I shall consider several formulations and approximate step
by step the final statement to be given much later. I believe that doing this allows
the exposition to proceed in a natural way.

The first statement of the two principles reads as follows.

First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic
liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others.

Second: social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a)
reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and (b) attached to positions and
offices open to all.

* * *
These principles primarily apply, as I have said, to the basic structure of

society and govern the assignment of rights and duties and regulate the distribution
of social and economic advantages. Their formulation presupposes that, for the
purposes of a theory of justice, the social structure may be viewed as having two
more or less distinct parts, the first principle applying to the one, the second
principle to the other. Thus we distinguish between the aspects of the social system
that define and secure the equal basic liberties and the aspects that specify and
establish social and economic inequalities. Now it is essential to observe that the
basic liberties are given by a list of such liberties. Important among these are
political liberty (the right to vote and to hold public office) and freedom of speech
and assembly: liberty of conscience and freedom of thought: freedom of the person,
which includes freedom from psychological oppression and physical assault and
dismemberment (integrity of the person); the right to hold personal property and
freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure as defined by the concept of the rule of
law. These liberties are to be equal by the first principle.

The second principle applies, in the first approximation, to the distribution of
income and wealth and to the design of organizations that make use of differences
in authority and responsibility. While the distribution of wealth and income need
not be equal, it must be to everyone’s advantage and at the same time, positions of

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authority and responsibility must be accessible to all. One applies the second
principle by holding positions open, and then, subject to this constraint, arranges
social and economic inequalities so that everyone benefits.

These principles are to be arranged in a serial order with the first principle
prior to the second. This ordering means that infringements of the basic equal
liberties protected by the first principle cannot be justified, or compensated for, by
greater social and economic advantages. These liberties have a central range of
application within which they can be limited and compromised only when they
conflict with other basic liberties. Since they may be limited when they clash with
one another, none of these liberties is absolute; but however they are adjusted to
form one system, this system is to be the same for all. It is difficult, and perhaps
impossible, to give a complete specification of these liberties independently from
the particular circumstances—social, economic, and technological—of a given
society. The hypothesis is that the general form of such a list could be devised with
sufficient exactness to sustain this conception of justice. Of course, liberties not on
the list, for example, the right to own certain kinds of property (e.g., means of
production) and freedom of contract as understood by the doctrine of laissez-faire
are not basic; and so they are not protected by the priority of the first principle.
Finally, in regard to the second principle, the distribution of wealth and income,
and positions of authority and responsibility, are to be consistent with both the
basic liberties and equality of opportunity.

The two principles are rather specific in their content, and their acceptance
rests on certain assumptions that I must eventually try to explain and justify. For
the present, it should be observed that these principle are a special case of a more
general conception of justice that can be expressed as follows.

All social values—liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the social bases of
self-respect—are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of
these values is to everyone’s advantage.

Injustice, then, is simply inequalities that are not to the benefit of all. Of course,
this conception is extremely vague and requires interpretation.

NOTES

1. Here I follow H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of (Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1961), pp.
155–159.

2. As the text suggests, I shall regard Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, Rousseau’s The
Social Contract, and Kant’s ethical works beginning with The Foundations of the Metaphysics
of Morals as definitive of the contract tradition. For all of its greatness, Hobbes’s Leviathan
raises special problems. A general historical survey is provided by J. W. Gough, The Social
Contract, 2nd ed. (Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1957), and Otto Gierke, Natural and the
Theory of Society. trans. with an introduction by Ernest Barker (Cambridge, The University
Press, 1934). A presentation of the contract view as primarily an ethical theory is to be found
in G. R. Grice, The Grounds of Moral Judgment (Cambridge, The University Press, 1967). See
also §19, note 30.

3. Kant is clear that the original agreement is hypothetical. See The Metaphysics of Morals, pt.
I (Rechtslehre), especially §§47, 52; and pt. II of the essay “Concerning the Common Saying:
This May Be True in Theory but It Does Not Apply in Practice,” in Kant’s Political Writings,
ed. Hans Reiss and trans. by H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge, The University Press, 1970), pp. 73–
87. See Georges Vlachos, La Pensée politique de Kant (Paris, Presses Universitaires de
France, 1962), pp. 326–335; and J. G. Murphy, Kant: The Philosophy of Right (London,
Macmillan, 1970), pp. 109–112, 133–136, for a further discussion.

4. For the formulation of this intuitive idea I am indebted to Allan Gibbard.

From John Rawls, A …